Portsmouth have suffered a catalogue of ongoing financial problems.
Players have been paid late on four occasions this season, while the club is also involved in a separate dispute with former owner Sacha Gaydamak over whether they have missed a deadline in paying a £9m chunk of the £28m they owe him.
The Premier League also withheld £2m of transfer payments and diverted a £7m slice of TV revenue to Chelsea and Watford to cover the signings of Glen Johnson and Tommy Smith.
Portsmouth Enter Administration
Docked 9 points and Englands 22nd City loses topflight football (maybe Portsmouth was so bad that they could not be called top flight). I wonder if MLB is stronger for not having Montreal, or the NBA is stronger for not having Seattle, or the NHL is stronger for not having Hartford, Winnipeq or Quebec.
almost 2 years ago
Dave Clark
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Suuuuuper Sonics
I have to wonder how you could throw Seattle SuperSonics into that mix?
I know nothing about the NHL teams, but the other teams really are victims of leagues that are run stupidly as compared to the NFL and MLS ( yes I said MLS ) and the teams that went under teams that had never won anything and never would win anything. ( I know Montreal WOULD have won in the strike season in baseball, but they didn’t )
I don’t see how those EPL teams have hung on that long quite frankly. There is zero chance of even a team that is good/middle of the road of winning anything…ever.
I read on another site some guy gets up early every Saturday to watch Burnley lose. He even said it just like that. Why ?
Supersonics
I throw them in because I know that situation too well (I was an employee for a few years), and that pain I feel comes up everytime pro/rel gets brought up in soccer discussions.
I am not a Supporter
I am not a Fan
I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
Because watching is fun
Because expecting to win means there’s no room for joy.
Because we like the players.
Because we like the game.
Because we want other teams to lose.
Because we are real fans rather than bandwagon riders.
by Graham MacAree on Feb 26, 2010 12:53 PM PST up reply actions
Not so.
Pompey won the FA Cup in 2008 and wasn’t in the top four—fairly sure they finished at the middle of the table. Now, it could be argued that their FA Cup run was part of the reason that they ended up in this situation, but it remains that they certainly won something and they weren’t the best team in the league.
7500 to Holte - American footy fans are slightly unprepared
by Kirsten Schlewitz on Feb 27, 2010 1:48 AM PST up reply actions
Seriously?
How is this even a question? If you think being a fan is about winning and only winning, then I really hope you aren’t a Sounders fan. I wouldn’t care if we lost every single game, I’d still be there in my seats every weekend and up to watch every single away game because that’s what being a supporter is about. Kudos to your Burnley fan friend for sticking with his team.
reply
that was meant to be a reply to the “suuuuuper sonics” thing btw… not the post itself.
by Brian Anderson on Feb 26, 2010 8:43 AM PST up reply actions
America is full of fair-weather fans
And Qwest is probably at least a third full of them too.
’Round here, if you win, they will come.
There is a historical relevance with European teams that we don’t have.
"Englands 22nd City loses topflight football"
Technically they lose it all the time. Administration means they will almost certainly go down this season, but who knows, they might be back up in 2011-2012. After all, Portsmouth weren’t a Premier League side as recently as 2002-2003, and their classic chant is Play Up, Pompey, Play Up.
The fact is, the winding up order has been put off. The team stays. The Premier League doesn’t go down to 19, and Pompey continues to exist. Administration is different from dissolution and Portsmouth haven’t lost their team. Pompey fans are loyal and they will continue to come to the games, even as a Champions side. Will it take awhile to make the side viable again? Of course. But they’re not dead, and they didn’t move. It’s not quite the same thing.
7500 to Holte - American footy fans are slightly unprepared
by Kirsten Schlewitz on Feb 27, 2010 1:55 AM PST reply actions
What evidence is there that this situation will be different
than LEEDS?
70 Million pounds of debt means that they will have no assetts, and they won’t get any for a long time. The pro/rel system is killing teams, and now not even the promise of the EPL is enough to keep them alive.
Cardiff, Leeds, Portsmouth, Southend, Coventry
And Portsmouth hasn’t avoided getting wound up, that has only been delayed.
I am not a Supporter
I am not a Fan
I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
This doesn't really seem to be a response
Leeds still has an intense fan base and they are moving back up through the leagues. What I was arguing is that there is a huge difference between Pompey being regulated and the Sonics leaving Seattle. Fans don’t just disappear if their team is relegated. Will there be a struggle for them to get anything back? Of course—it clearly was at Leeds as well. But Portsmouth is not diminished due to this action.
Had the winding up gone through than yes, they would be a lesser city due to their lack of an FC. But the argument is not parallel, and it is actually diminishing to Pompey’s loyal supporters to say that it is.
7500 to Holte - American footy fans are slightly unprepared
by Kirsten Schlewitz on Feb 28, 2010 1:53 PM PST up reply actions
Actually fans DO disappear when teams are sent down
So badly do they leave that balloon payments are given and still teams that go down more often stay down than they do bounce up.
Portsmouth is not diminished? They had to apply to FIFA to be allowed to sell players outside the window just to make payroll. They are on their 4th billionaire owner who can’t afford to own the team, in just a year.
If Seattle got a D-League team to replace the Sonics would that mean that the city was not lesser? NO, it wouldn’t.
100M$ in debt will kill Portsmouth and within four years they will be in League One at best. They will follow the path of Leeds, hopefully. I am hopeful that they don’t follow the path of Luton Town, or Southend United, or Cardiff City, or Crystal Palace, or Nott’s County, or Southhampton, or Salisbury City, or Gateshead, or Chesterfield City. The list of clubs in England in or facing administration and possible winding up is longer than ever and not even the Billions of the Premiership are enough to save them now.
The system is clearly broken
I am not a Supporter
I am not a Fan
I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
For me this is not about Portsmouth
but about a broken business model.
Just as the NBA and NHL are also broken. Billions in revenue aren’t able to keep teams solvent.
There’s a reason that Platini and Blatter are working towards debt limitation. There is a reason they are exploring roster limits and salary caps. And it isn’t because everything in UEFA is perfect.
I am not a Supporter
I am not a Fan
I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
.
So badly do they leave that balloon payments are given and still teams that go down more often stay down than they do bounce up.
That’s not losing fans, that’s losing television payments.
by Graham MacAree on Feb 28, 2010 7:25 PM PST up reply actions
they also lose fans
~25% in their first year down.
A bad team, generally with poor attendance, loses about 25% of its fans its first year down.
I am not a Supporter
I am not a Fan
I am a Sounder
Sounder At Heart
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